kanopy: thoughtful entertainment. what are you watching now?

what a shame; hopefully kanopy will be able to survive. the massive cost of subscription deals is obvs a problem for all libraries but astonished that the nypl don't feel the cost is sustainable. currently have access through a uk institution, which was already limited compared to the US offering and has now switched from general access to a system where you have to ask the library to get access to individual material.

ideal result would be that this prompts kanopy to work out a business model far more affordable/sustainable for public libraries, but we'll see

once i read that my library might have to pay $2 per view i was definitely less enthusiastic about this

yeah i'm very bummed abt the NYPL/BPL cuts. guess i'll try n do some very focused viewing this week. ordering DVDs in to your local branch remains like 90% reliable if you can deal with the wait times, tho obv they don't have everything.

welp, I never watched anything.

I invite you all to join me in borrowing DVDs as Edison intended.

Lol

Is it time to go back to the ghost of Fandor?

does anything still exist there? my free membership expired shortly after they fired everybody that worked there, and they hadn't added anything new in months at that point...

Looks the same now as at the end of last year.

i thought that was a pretty shitty thing for kanopy to do - a for-profit company contacting library patrons directly (having acquired their personal information) to complain to them that their library isn't able to afford their expensive subscription

and "open access to knowledge," for those of us who work to advance such a thing, means something different than subscription paywalls

^

Does anyone here have access to Hoopla (https://www.hoopladigital.com/)? They seem to be competing in Kanopy's sector. (DC Public Libraries have gone with Kanopy, so I can't assess Hoopla's holdings.)

hmm. i just did some superficial skimming at justwatch.com (very useful site if you've got more than one streaming service going) and Hoopla's offerings strike me as things you would not be surprised to see pop up on Netflix, minus the attention-grabbing blockbusters up top, and with, i think, a slightly larger proportion of pre-1990 titles and foreign/arthouse options. it's nothing like kanopy's criterion/arthouse/foreign/documentary focus, or fandor's cult material, but you could do a lot worse.

kanopy's overlap with hulu/netflix/criterion was considerable but there were numerous things it got that no one else did

Just got the relevant email from the NYPL.

hoopla has by far the best selection of graphic novels for a non-pay service, so i at least use it for that. but they have audiobooks, ebooks, movies, streaming music etc

Queens Public Library btw still has a fractional streaming offering through the OverDrive platform. From what I can tell the offerings here are more customized to each library system. I just scrolled through it all myself; QPL's offerings include something like 900 total movie titles, but that should be understood to include hundreds of videos explaining how to use PowerPoint 2013, semi-animated renderings of children's picture books, etc. In theory one could filter down to *movies* as such, but the data entry side of things is pathetically bad - if you filter for 'feature films,' hundreds of things that should show up don't. Also, films are sometimes "by" the director, sometimes the distributor, sometimes the lead actor. Who knew Orlando Bloom had such a rich directorial career? Still.... there's at least a handful of things and if you have a Queens library card it might be worth skimming through. Asian cinema is well-represented.

I will spend the remaining days watching as much of the otherwise absent NYPL holdings as I can, ie Chaplin's Keystone films, Melies, the Lumieres, maybe some Griffith.

kanopy's overlap with hulu/netflix/criterion was considerable but there were numerous things it got that no one else did

Kanopy right now has streaming rights to a number of Kino/Flicker Alley/Cohen titles that are this kitten's catnip. Supposedly these labels will be supplying titles to the Criterion Channel, but I'm not holding my breath. Is it a matter of licensing agreements with Kanopy having to expire before CC can pick up these titles?

I just had a conversation with one of our A/V librarians, who said we still have professors who compel students to hit the library and watch a reserve copy of a film for the experience of dealing with physical media. I may do it next semester.

ugh i watched othello that way in college, it was the absolute pits

i watched crimes and misdemeanors and a few others that way (this was a while ago), watching it in the dark in a viewing room deep within the library basement

I watched Pimpernel Smith that way in 1983-1984 and had a great time.

Cohen titles
Yes to these

otoh to learn that my library carried one of Bunuel's Mexican films on VHS in 1994 was a genuine thrill.

Maybe it’s time to remind myself of what Jerry Carlson is up to on the CUNY channel, which is where I first saw Mexican Bus Ride, amongst others.

Well, I've already resorted to p|r@(y as a media consumer. Looks like I'm going to have to come in on the supply side, as well.

so i binged a bunch of Chaplin, Melies and Griffith on the last weekend.

I assume you can get a New Jersey/Connecticut/etc library card and still use the service if New York PL is kaput.

LA offers a $50 a year non-resident card but you have to pick it up in person; if any east coasters travel, that might be worth the trouble.
https://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/borrower-services

Another useful Kanopy import was/is Oscilloscope.

Are public libraries abandoning Kanopy en masse? I just figured out how to access it through Hennepin County Libraries and it's expiring today; I see that New York Public Libraries are ending their license, too, citing rising costs.

sf library has been expanding it, I hope it doesn't end

nypl dropped it ages ago tho.

My mistake — the article on NYPL dropping it was from late June 2019; I didn't look at the year.

I found out about the Hennepin access about a month before it went away, tried to make the most of it. So much stuff I'd been trying to see for ages (and so much that went still unwatched). From fave to slightly less fave:

Tongues Untied
Blue (Jarman) (audio was pretty bad, but was able to "sync" it with a bootleg youtube version)
The Harder They Come
Ganja & Hess
Born in Flames
The Bigamist
Wild Style
Sidewalk Stories
Yeelen
A Bucket of Blood
Illusions (Julie Dash short)
The Law (Ouédraogo)
Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock & Roll
The Queen of Spades (Dickinson)
Tomboy (Sciamma)
Wend Kuuni
Knife+Heart

I just saw that Kanopy now has Sátántangó. so fantastic!

I've been really loving trawling through all of the Frederick Wiseman documentaries

also see they have In Fabric, haven't watched it yet

yeah, that just missed the cut during my final day spree!

I hope that Kanopy doesn't go away for me

My city library talked about adding it but never did, the cost is prohibitive.

> Blue (Jarman)

I remember when this was on British TV and the TV station proudly announced that they were showing the widescreen version...

kind of weird and annoying when justwatch shows something as only streaming on kanopy.

how so?

Because most libraries dropped it long ago, at least of the ones that I have access to.

Still have it through Montgomery County, MD libraries.

Lucky you.

Complain to your local town board! It's a wonderful resource.

... whose business model turns out to be way too expensive for all the libraries who've terminated the relationship, sadly